Coming soon: Facebook offline video feature for Android

Mark Zuckerberg said that the firm is working on bringing new features to Facebook LiveTOI Tech | Updated: July 19, 2016, 09:58 IST

Picture credits: gettyEarlier this month there were reports that Facebook has started testing its offline video feature in India. The feature has now reportedly started rolling out to users via the Facebook version 85 and 86 (beta) for Android.

Spotted first by Android Police, the feature, for now, lets users save videos in the ‘Saved’ section inside the app itself. This can be done by tapping on the 'Save video' option from the drop down menu in the particular post.

These saved videos can be viewed offline as many times as users want. As per the website, Facebook would not let users download the videos directly on the device storage in order to make them stick with the social media service.

Presently, users can save article and video links on Facebook that don't work in case the user is offline. This new feature will, however, change that. The similar feature is seen with Google’s Youtube offline feature as it too lets users save the video inside the app and watch them later.

As reported earlier, only the original videos posted on personal Facebook profiles and pages will get the offline video download option. It has also been mentioned that video publishers can too choose not to make their videos available for offline downloads. So far, it is not clear which other countries will be receiving the feature.

The update comes just weeks after the company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the firm is working on bringing new features to Facebook Live at the recent Live Q&A session.